


Ice of Spring

by Ramzes



Series: A Trial of Blood and Loss [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Dark, Gen, angsty, not what i want to have happened but what i believed happened anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-07-13 12:45:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16018196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramzes/pseuds/Ramzes
Summary: “What is it?” Daeron asked at last because Rhaegel was not letting go.“I wonder how far it’s going to go,” his son finally said.“What?”“Your desire to see him hurt.”Maekar had not meant to kill his brother. Of course he had not. But it did not change the fact that he did. And this is something that no one is going to forget.





	1. Daeron

The stench of King’s Landing was legendary – starting well before the city came into view and rising almost half-way to the top of Aegon’s Hill. In King Daeron’s mind, it was the most overwhelming feature of his capital and he had to reach the ripe old age of five-and-fifty to understand how wrong he had been. The sound of the city was just as prevalent – and it actually reached the Red Keep. A constant buzz, punctuated by sharper noises that only stood out because no one even noticed the buzz. The sound of life. Daeron only realized it existence now, when it was no longer there. Now, King’s Landing was full of dead and those who waited to die and it was silent. Creepy silent. It looked so from Aegon’s Hill, at least. The dead King’s Landing. As dead as the body now burning on the pyre…

It felt so strange that the touch of the Stranger had made smallfolk and highborn equal now. They all went to the flames, from the beggars in the street to Valarr himself. Daeron could not look away from the orange tongues consuming his grandson’s remains but he could not see anything either. He could only see the day, almost twenty years ago, when his dreams had come true and the world had seemed his for the taking. The birth of this child that carried the blood of dragons, the blood of the Dornish Marches, and the blood of Sunspear had looked like a promise, a good omen. Valarr had been supposed to bring the unification of the realm to its completion because time would not let Daeron and perhaps even Baelor do it. A new generation was needed, a new generation born in united Westeros to feel in their bones. Now, Valarr was headed to meet the gods as his grandfather still lived and this seemed impossible to Daeron. Impossibly cruel. Painful even beyond impossibility. _But he wasn’t supposed to go away_ , Daeron thought numbly. _Neither him nor Matarys._ Yet here they were, gathered in the court right beyond the bridge of Maegor’s Hill to attend the second royal burial in two weeks.

Baelor had been seen by many who had come to pay their respects for one last time and see him on his last way; now, only some of the people dwelling in the Red Keep had come for Valarr. Fear had replaced stench and noise, more permeating that they had ever been.

Daeron felt Baelor’s presence at his side more acutely than ever. The reproach that his son would have given him. The reproach that he was giving himself right now. He should have been able to prevent this. Stop it from happening. He did not know how but he felt that he should have been able to do it. Just like he should have been able to prevent Baelor’s death. He should have handled Maekar better… A look at his youngest son revealed just what he expected to see: no expression at all, gritted teeth as Maekar pushed his way through this as he did with everything else. _He’d better change this if he wants to keep going out,_ Daeron thought fleetingly but with some concern. A King’s Landing in the grip of panic would find it easy to find a culprit in him – not for causing the sickness but for being who he was and carrying himself the way he did. And despair could push people beyond all limits. Daeron still had no idea just how Maekar, specifically, fared in the streets. _I’ll have to warn him,_ he thought but if he intended to have this conversation a few hours after the burial, he was in for a disappointment: Maekar had already left to have a look at the new cordon separating an entire quarter with not a single unaffected household from the rest of the city. _I should have known,_ Daeron thought and wondered bitterly if Maekar even felt saddened by his nephew’s death. As much as he fought it, in the last few months, he had started letting all the things people whispered, all the shameful doubts that he had been trying to keep at bay for over fifteen years get to him. It was so difficult and confusing. At one moment, he remembered a silver-haired boy who never gave him any trouble, did everything well and dreamed of bringing glory to his House, the son he had never taken much notice of but loved anyway; but in the next, the other recollection came and there was no escape from it. Maekar had killed Baelor with his own hands and although Daeron believed, or wanted to believe that it had been an accident, he did not indulge in illusions. Maekar was a severe, self-contained man haunted by the little that he lacked to gain the affection and recognition that he desperately craved, yet did not know how to win, perhaps capable of everything to get them, in any way  – a man Daeron feared he did not know, might have never known at all. 

One thing had remained unchanged, though: Maekar’s feeling of duty. It kept pushing him to do the right thing. And being Maekar, he would not avoid danger and fear: whenever something scared him, he did not run away but sought to see it face to face. Right now, everyone’s fear was one and the same and Maekar did not make any exception. Daeron glanced at the shutters of the windows in his granddaughters’ chambers and felt how his own fear rose, the fear that despite the strict order that they should not leave their chambers by any pretext, the plague would find its way there. He almost welcomed it, for it soothed him to know that despite his complex feelings for Maekar, his feelings for Daella and Rhae had remained unchanged. 

“I wish he had not gone out today,” Rhaegel said unexpectedly, as if he had read his father’s thoughts. He did not specify whom he was talking about but Daeron did not think there could be any mistake. For all the feebleness of his mind, Rhaegel could be more intuitive than the rest of his brothers together. Now, he sounded as if he was merely continuing a conversation that they had had just a moment ago.

“Do you?” Daeron asked. “Why is this?”

“Because the moods against him have been rising uncontrollably. Yesterday, he got surrounded by a throng who wanted to make him order the opening of the city gates, so people could leave, run away from the plague. There was some casting of stones… One of these days, he may find himself dragged off his horse and killed right there.”

“He won’t,” the King said with pretended certainty. “Rhaegel, where do you know all this from?”

His son shrugged. “I asked.”

It was so simple that Daeron wondered why he had not thought about such a decision. Especially when Maekar was concerned. He rarely talked about his struggles – he just found a way to bring them to conclusion. The only way to know what was going on with him was to ask. Even this was no promise of an answer but not doing it was a promise of no answer at all.

Rhaegel was staring at him, eyes narrowed and focused. It was in moments like this when the pain became too much to bear, these glimpses of what his son might have been if not for… what? His blood? An accident right before birth? A whim of the Seven? Daeron did not know and maesters could not offer anything by the way of explanation.

As usual, he stopped thinking about this because decades ago, he had realized that this was the only way to survive.

“What is it?” he asked at last because Rhaegel was not letting go.

“I wonder how far it’s going to go,” his son finally said.

“What?”

“Your desire to see him hurt.”

Daeron’s head went back as if Rhaegel had slapped him but he did not say anything. After all, that was what everyone was thinking. Rhaegel was just the only one brave or mad enough to say it to his face.

“His pain doesn’t give me any pleasure,” he denied even knowing that it was not quite true.

“Doesn’t it?” Rhaegel asked and finally looked away, at the gardens beyond the window. Plants and flowers were the only thing living in King’s Landing right now. They did not care about death and despair – they just went on and brought colour and vibrancy in a world that had been drained of any. “You’re glad… You want him to suffer…”

Daeron stilled his hand, shocked by the sudden urge to hit Rhaegel. He had never felt this way before, never. With Baelor and Maekar, and even Aerys – yes, certainly. Rhaegel had waited for over thirty years but he had caught up. None of the others would have dared…

“You’ve always been on his side,” he heard himself say. As different as those two were, they had each other’s back. Guarded each other’s secrets. For decades.

Rhaegel blinked, confused and then angry as well. “Sides? There are sides now?” He sighed. “The only thing I wonder is whose side you’re going to take, the Stranger’s or his, if you were given this choice.”

 _I wonder as well_ , Daeron thought and felt incredibly old, spent and most of all, ashamed. _I wonder as well._


	2. Maekar

The Stranger’s presence had become a constant; for all of Maekar’s disillusionment with the Seven, if he needed proof about their existence, he found it in those dark days when he seemed to only rise from his sleep to hear another keening sound from somewhere in the Red Keep, meaning that someone had just died; in the streets, wailing had become part of the regular breathing of the entire city, even more sickening than the filthy air because of its might and despair. Sometimes, Maekar thought he had glimpsed the half-human face lurking behind a corner but the god always disappeared before his party got there; at other times, he could swear that he saw him leaning towards either his male or female form but it inevitably turned out to be a man or woman, someone who had lost their human visage to grief.

Maekar felt his presence most acutely at Valarr’s funeral, felt the icy hand sweeping every vestige of hope, belief in better days, feeling of justice. How had this come to be, people wondered. Why had the innocent young man, the onetime joy and hope of the realm, Baelor’s boy died while the kinslayer lived? Maekar also wondered but unlike many, he had the answer. Oh, not why Valarr and Matarys had died - just why he survived. Why he would survive the plague even if he was the only man in King’s Landing who would.

The embrace of grave would be a mercy and he had not been punished nearly enough.

Every morning before he assumed his obligations and every evening at the same time, provided that he had returned to the Red Keep already, he stood in the garden under Daella and Rhae’s chambers and listened. There was no sound. No keening. Sweet relief spread all over him and if he saw Saryl Lothston, officially his daughters’ main caretaker and as everyone knew, the woman who had been sharing his bed, albeit not his public life, at the window, the day became brighter. He felt her presence like a gift. Sometimes, she took the girls to the window as well and as they waved at him, he wondered how much they knew about the danger. Neither they nor Saryl left the wing and the number of servants had been limited to just two or three. Undoubtedly, Saryl had made the best decision, taking care of their peace of mind as he tried to take care of their safety through his hopeless battle with the disease brought by the spring.

They were fine, the three of them. Maekar felt that he’d do anything to keep them this way.

Another figure visited him at night, haunting his dreams and making him startle awake. Dyanna, his beautiful Dornish wife. He had never stopped dreaming of her entirely but in the last few months, the situation had gotten out of control. If before she and her agony had visited his nights just once or twice a month, after Baelor’s death they had been robbing him of sleep a few times a week and now, surrounded by death, with no one to talk to during the day and alone in his bed at night, he found out that Dyanna’s shadow had returned to being his constant companion. Dyanna – and Baelor. Together, the two of them made his nights colder than ice.

“You look terrible,” Rhaegel told him one day with his usual candour. “Are you not going to take a sleeping draught, finally?”

Maekar shook his head. Draughts and potions for someone whose body was healthy just a sign of weakness. He would hold through.

* * *

“You look like a ghost,” his father observed one night, after Maekar had reported on the last developments that he had seen in the city, and Maekar looked up sharply. For the first time since the beginning of the plague, Daeron was breaking the unspoken agreement that they would keep their relationship strictly formal, never talking of anything else but what they had done or had yet to do – and about the girls, sometimes. Since neither had seen them in over a month, they had little to say to each other in this regard.

“If you think you look any better…” Maekar replied icily, anger boiling in him because the king had no reason to try and reverse the coldness that had now settled firmly between them. It would only make it worse when Daeron remembered what Maekar had done. The horror was now muted by the nightmare they were currently dwelling in but it would return soon enough. Some people preferred having had something and then lost it but Maekar had never been one of them.

The king wasn’t moved. “This isn’t about me, though. The Grand Maester is going to see you this very night. I don’t want you to come down with…”

“I don’t have the plague,” Maekar said briskly. “And if I do, sometime in the future, we won’t have this conversation at all. I’ll just die, likely before you’re even appraised that I’ve been ill.”

Daeron shook his head with an impatient sigh. “I don’t want you to come down with _anything_ ,” he said. “You look unwell, Maekar, and I am concerned. Do you ever take a rest? Eat a proper meal? Sleep at night? I can see that you don’t. But I want to make sure that’s all.”

Something of Maekar’s cynical disbelief must have shown because Daeron suddenly looked dejected. “You’re my son,” he said. “Your suffering doesn’t delight me in any way.”

 _And they say Rhaegel is the one prone to delusions_ , Maekar thought as his father denied what had, until very recently, been a painful, although expected and well deserved reality. But he had to give Daeron the pretension, did he not? Pretend that he believed him. He nodded. “Very well,” he said. “Send the Grand Maester over.”

* * *

The shaking hands as the Grand Maester examined him told Maekar that the man was scared. Even the one who should know best how the sickness manifested itself and that Maekar clearly did not have it could not help this normal human fear. Maekar wondered detachedly just how much had gone wrong with him if _he_ did not fear the plague for himself. Just his loved ones.

“Do you feel any weakness in your arm?” the Grand Maester asked and Maekar was reminded that no matter his personal flaws, the man was considered one of the greatest healers of his time. He had no idea how the Grand Maester had spotted that the old wound he had sustained at Redgrass Field had started troubling him again as it happened from time to time.

“A little,” he admitted. “It will pass. And there’s no need to mention this to the King. He wants to know if I’m ill and this is not an illness.”

As little as he believed that his father didn’t relish his pain, Maekar didn’t think it held true for any ailments and hurts of the body. But he was surprised to hear words like exhaustion, general weakening, and the need of a strengthening regimen. Surely it could not be about him? “I have no time to indulge myself,” he said briefly. “I’ll eat better but don’t bother with any draughts. I won’t be taking them.”

The old man shook his head and muttered something like, “See the boy, and you know the man.” Maekar was too tired to reflect on this but he supposed it had something to do with the fact that he and the Grand Maester knew each other since his birth. He wondered if the man would appraise his father of his refusal to take any cure unless specifically asked. Daeron had this gift of making people care and want to spare him as many unpleasant things as possible. _Baelor did inherit this from him,_ Maekar though as the Grand Maester left.

But it turned out that his supposed health troubles were not limited to his father’s knowledge. As he took his supper – there was no evening feast these days – Saryl entered his chambers for the first time in months. “I heard all kind of terrible things,” she started without preamble. “How are you? Really?”

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought we had an agreement!”

She waved this away and took a seat across him at the table. Maekar clasped his hands together because any moment now, he’d reach out and touch her face despite knowing that it was better for people to not get close right now. He’d been starved for human affection for so long and with her, it felt like the sun had come in, no matter the circumstances.

“What happened?” she asked. “I heard that the plague had been caught, that it was some woman…”

All the will in the world could not prevent Maekar from shivering. “These were just superstitions,” he said. “Desperate, ignorant people seeing ghosts everywhere. The gold cloaks went after her this morning. I saw how they burned down the house she was supposedly hiding in.” He shuddered again. “It was just a poor woman who had gone mad after her children all died from the disease. She was already dead when they came for her.”

Saryl’s eyes went wide and sad. She did not say a thing but he saw how she paled. “Fools!” he flared. “We live in a city of fools and this is the truth. If we told them once, we told them a hundred times: don’t hide the fact that someone has died in your house out of fear that we’re going to burn it. More people in your household are going to die and we’re eventually going to burn it anyway. Do they listen? Of course not! We tell them not to take any belongings from a house where someone has died – and what do they do? They take carpets and goblets, and the disease with them! That’s why this sickness has no end. We tell them… Gods, I’m starting to think that Bloodraven has the right of it. Only the threat of death is going to stop them. Maybe.”

Saryl let him rage for a long time. Helplessness stirred his anger in a manner that few other things could but eventually, he grew quiet and she poured goblets for both of them.

“Why are you here?” he finally asked. “We agreed that you should not leave your chambers at all, lest you catch the disease.”

“I won’t bring it to the girls,” Saryl replied calmly. “I won’t be going back there at all. I heard all kind of rumours about you, Maekar, and since you’d been unwell for a long time before the sickness came, I got scared – and with a good reason, as I see. If you aren’t ill yet, you will be soon…”

It warmed his heart to know that he meant so much to her but it made him angry as well. “You should not have done it,” he said. “Did you think what would happen if we both get ill? Even if you don’t care about your own safety, I thought the girls meant more to you. They will be heartbroken to lose both of us at the same time.”

For a moment, an expression of pain crossed her eyes but she did not lose her composure. “And what do you think is going to happen to me if you die of this sickness? Do you really think I’d be allowed to stay with them? They will be immediately extricated from my immoral influence and I’ll be sent away – unless I get the walk of shame for being a woman who is loose with my morals, and one known to visit witches and ensnare you through sorcery because the Seven know I can’t do it with my looks!”

 _But you will live, you will live_ , Maekar thought. His fear for her and the girls after what he kept seeing and reading about every day, the reminder that their relationship had always cost her more than it had him and the knowledge that this was exactly the way his family would treat her pushed him to say the unforgivable. “I wonder if you would have thought this way if they were yours, you know. Because all I’m seeing right now is a spoiled child feeling sorry for herself and the wonderful life she has now. I know you’ve always wanted to be their mother but let me tell you, you aren’t doing a very good job right now. Perhaps that’s why you’re prevented from ever becoming a mother? Thank the Seven for not working a miracle for you.”

Silence stretched. Maekar’s anger disappeared instantly. She would never forgive him for these words. He held out a hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t… You know I didn’t mean it. I just…”

She stood before him, white-faced and very calm. He could not say if she heard him but when he tried to take her hand, she pushed him away, turned around, left silently and softly closed the door behind her.

Once again, he had achieved the hard task to bring ruin to his own life.

Now, he was well and truly alone.


	3. Tomorrow

Maekar had gone to sleep right next to the royal sept – against it, in fact, and Daeron’s heart went cold as he hurried towards him. The pale spring sun danced in his son’s fair hair and it was horrible to see that the only movement came from the stirring of the thin rays. Maekar was not stirring at all.

Daeron had to make just a few more steps to reach him but he suddenly felt that he could not. His fear rose, outgrowing his mind and heart, as he watched the pale face and the head leaned against the wall.

And then, Maekar moved. Opened his eyes. Blinked a few times. In his sleep, he must have felt his father’s fear. He pushed himself upright from the marble bench and only when he turned, he saw Daeron and stopped.

“Do you have to sleep in the courtyard?” the King snapped, his fear turning to anger. His heart had yet to regain its normal beating. “You do have a nice bed.”

Maekar did not seem to hear him, so he tried anew. “Why are you sleeping here?”

“Because I don’t want to go back there,” Maekar replied impulsively, made a few steps and seemed to collect his bearings. “I just sat down to rest for a few moments,” he said. “I didn’t mean to go to sleep.”

Daeron bit his lip. This was the first time in months when he saw Maekar in daylight and in the open and the sight did not appeal to him at all. His son looked even worse than he did in the candlelight in Daeron’s solar. Gaunter. Older. Staring at Maekar’s hands, Daeron thought for the first time in years that they looked more tired than strong – and it was with a startle of shock and a little horror that he realized his first thought had not been that these had been the hands that had killed Baelor. Guilt came crashing upon him, as if the fact that his concern for Maekar had overwhelmed him was some kind of betrayal to Baelor. “Come with me,” he said and in the brief time he needed to pour a goblet of wine, Maekar had already dozed off again. Thankfully, in the muted light of the solar he looked a little better. Daeron liked this, even if he knew it was an illusion.

Once awake again, Maekar refused the wine. “I’ll go back to sleep immediately,” he said. “And I’d prefer some water… at least while we have it…”

“The wells in the Red Keep aren’t contaminated,” Daeron said.

Yet. Not contaminated yet. They had ordered to have water brought down to the city two times a day; twelve of the draymen had already died – that Daeron knew of.

“Go back to your chambers, have a meal and go to bed,” the King ordered. “Tomorrow, you’ll be relieved of any duties and in the next few days, you won’t be going down into the city.”

Maekar shook his head. “I have to,” he said. “Didn’t Brynden tell you? About the rumours?”

“He did.” Daeron was not surprised by the fantastic tales sprouting and growing every day. Smallfolk seemed to feel that they had been left to the mercy of the Stranger and that no one cared about their homes, belongings, and shops – the rumour had it that the sickness could not be spread through anything not living. This, of course, was a lie. “Do they think we’ve fled the city under the guise of night?”

“Yes.” Maekar drank deeply from the new goblet Daeron pressed into his hand even before Daeron removed his fingers. Surprised, the King realized that he was in no hurry to break the contact and wondered how long it had been since he had last touched his youngest. Before Mariah’s death? Or even longer? Since Ashford, he had been as careful to avoid it as Maekar. “They must see me, Father, make sure that we’re still here, else I don’t know what they’re going to do. They’re desperate… and dangerous.”

A dark red welt marred his temple and Daeron wondered what had caused it. A stone, perhaps? Thrown at him? Everything in him rebelled at the idea of basically turning Maekar a hostage for his good faith with his own subjects – but what other choice did they have?

Still, Maekar looked exhausted, weaker than ever before. Could this make it easier for him to catch the disease? Daeron drove this thought away.

“This is a city of ghosts now,” Maekar said. “Everyone hides between their four walls… unless they’re part of the crowds gathering to threaten everyone of any station who rides by.”

“Well, you won’t be riding by,” Daeron said, noticing how full Maekar’s plates still were. “If you won’t dine in my solar, will you do it in Lady Saryl’s if I order you there?”

Maekar stared at him, amazed. In all these years, Daeron had only mentioned Saryl once – and it had ended in a quarrel. “No,” he said after a while. “You mean you don’t know? Everyone has been talking about our… disagreement.”

So, that was why he looked so terrible. Daeron sighed. _What did you do_ , he wanted to ask and it was a little odd because it did not occur to him for a moment that it could be the lady’s fault. For all his distrust of her – barren and visiting witches who were supposed to either help her conceive or keep Maekar at her side – he did not doubt her fierce devotion to his son. He had seen it, at the only time he had talked to her. She looked like a woman of reason. Maekar was the one who made mistakes that could not be fixed. But even this thought lacked the edge that had been colouring his attitude to his son ever since Ashford.

“She isn’t going to keep it against you forever,” he said reluctantly; for a moment, anger surged in his blood because it was ridiculous to involve himself in _this_ affair. But when Maekar looked worse than ever before?

Maekar shook his head. “Not this time.”

“Why not?”

“Because what I told her was the truth.”

Silence settled in the solar and dragged on. Daeron understood what Maekar meant. A truth hurled in one’s face during a heated argument could hurt in a way that no insult ever could. An insult could be overlooked, forgotten; a truth could not.

“Very well then,” he finally said. “For now, you’re staying here.”

Maekar’s mouth twisted. “I am,” he agreed. “It isn’t as if I can do much more now. Except for hunting back some men from the Red Keep who seem to have fled… Am I wrong, or did the men who carted the bodies off to the pits to be burned flee? That’s what I heard on my way here…”

“You aren’t wrong,” Daeron replied. Standing at the window, he could only see the walls of the Maegor’s Holdfast but he knew what sight would meet his eyes, should he stand at the castle wall: a long line of women winding up like a huge snake towards the septs to pray for their dead, promise, and lay their most precious possessions at the feet of the Seven in the hope of winning their mercy. Prayers for healing, for rains that could wash the disease away...The columns of smoke were visible even from here – the smoke from the pits, the smoke from the contaminated houses that were getting demolished right now. Grimly, Daeron wondered if he’d be forced to burn his entire capital.

He stayed there, staring at the red walls for a long time. When he turned back, he realized that it must have been his longest time in Maekar’s company when Baelor’s shadow had not crept between their words, sat with them. Oh, Daeron felt his presence as sharply as ever but this time, Baelor had withdrawn somewhere in the corner, a silent watcher. All of a sudden, he remembered this same thing happening many years ago - he dealing with his job and Maekar doing his own thing, so quietly that it was easy to forget there was a child nearby, at least until Daeron happened to look in his direction. The memory was so clear. Daeron could not believe how he could have forgotten.

“You’re not going to your chambers tonight,” he said a few hours later as darkness crept upon them, signifying that they had made it through another long day. “You’re going to sleep in my chamber and attend me at night.”

The fact that Maekar did not protest told Daeron exactly how tired he was of being alone, how exhausted by restless sleep. Ildo, the body servant who had been sleeping in the corner of Daeron’s bedchamber ever since Mariah’s death looked displeased to relinquish his bed and move to the antechamber, as if the King’s place of sleep offered some kind of protection; but of course, he made no protestations.

Maekar went to sleep before Daeron could even reach his own bed – and a long night of nightmares and the near impossibility to shake him awake began. At one point, Daeron felt the very real fear that this time, he would not succeed, that his son would forever stay to dwell in the world that had him toss and turn, and twitch with horror and pain. He had heard that this had been an almost constant event since that disastrous tourney and he had felt relief and something like dark satisfaction that he had been ashamed to admit even to himself; now, he felt only fear. _Tomorrow_ , he thought as Maekar fell into his last stretch of sleep for this night because dawn was near. _I’ll tell him tomorrow,_ he promised silently and went to sleep before he even knew what he was going to say tomorrow.

 

* * *

 

 

The funeral of the King brought the rain over King’s Landing. Even as they burned the lifeless body, the skies opened and the outpouring began, thick enough to wash the disease away if it would only last a few days. But no, the fall began with hailstorm and Maekar felt some bitter relief as he exposed his skin to the hard ice balls and got it bleeding. All around, people were running for shelter and muttering that he had gone mad. But this pain was sharp enough to mute the one in his heart, so Maekar welcomed it, although he knew that everything he would wear today would turn scarlet.

Among the few people who did not step away and look for cover, he saw Saryl and startled. She stood with her head bowed, deep in thought, and he wondered what she might be thinking about. Surely it could not be grief? His father had not been kind to her, although he had not been unkind either. Then?

Suddenly feeling in his bones that this was his last chance, Maekar went to her. She looked up. “Why are you here?”

He paused, unsure of how to reply. He could offer no apology that would really make up for what he had said. Then?

“I want to ask you something,” he said and to his relief, she did not tell him that she did not want to hear it.”

“Ask away,” she said cautiously, evenly.

“Will you come to my chambers with me?” he asked.

She did not answer him immediately. He waited. The thought of going to sleep alone tonight could not be borne, yet it was not up to him…

“Yes,” Saryl finally said, looking up at him, and as he took her hand and pressed it over his heart, lightheaded with gratitude and relief, he wondered what his father had wanted to tell him this last night, before they both went to sleep that only one of them had woken from capable to speak coherently. The pain had robbed King Daeron of his mind almost immediately.

 

 

**The End**


End file.
